Over 20,000 whales have been killed since commercial whaling was banned by the International Whaling Commission in 1986. How? Partly because a loophole allows any nation to issue itself a permit to kill any number of whales "for the purposes of scientific research" and sell the whale meat in supermarkets later!

Some nations, like Japan, continue to expand their programs of "scientific" killing. In fact, only 11% of Japanese adults support the killings, and so Japan has invested in a public relations offensive to convince the public that whaling is culturally and economically important to Japan and that whales eat too many fish and threaten the conservation of fish stocks - a claim for which there is no scientific basis.

More than 1,400 whales are expected to suffer a long and torturous death this year alone.

Sign this petition to Japan's Ministry of the Environment, urging him to stop flouting our international agreement to protect whales via so-called "scientific" whale-killing.

Dear Ministry,

Commercial whaling during the last century decimated most of the world's whale populations - between 1925 and 1975, it is estimated that more than 1.5 million whales were killed in total. The Ministry of the Environment is an important institution within the Japanese government, and I ask that you use your influence to end the use of "scientific whaling."

Since the world community agreed to protect whales in 1986, over 20,000 whales have been killed, many for so-called "scientific" reasons, even though the whale meat is later sold in supermarkets.

We are far too close to witnessing a return to large-scale commercial whaling. Norway continues its commercial whaling program in the North Atlantic, openly flouting the IWC's moratorium. Your support of "scientific" whaling propagates the problem further; now Iceland has announced a three-year "scientific" whaling program that failed to meet the approval of the IWC's Scientific Committee and which the US has termed "useless."

In the past three years, Japan, Norway and Iceland have all increased resources devoted to whaling programs, despite the fact that some studies show that only 11% of Japan's adult population actively supports whaling.

Please be an international leader by stopping this practice.

The undersigned,